Tuesday, 22 April 2008

Vegetarian Sausage Rolls

On the weekend I had a yen for sausage rolls. I mean the vegetarian variety, of course. Perhaps my neb at nut roast event has made me nostalgic for food from my childhood. Some might even argue that a vegetarian sausage roll is just a nut roast in pastry.

When I was too young to know any better and ate meat, sausage rolls were eaten at parties or just for light meals (or even sitting in a dressing gown in front of a soap opera, but I can’t mention names)! They were often offered as an alternative to meat pies which we called plasma pies (shudder of horror)! We usually had small sausage rolls that lots of little hands could grab and dunk in tomato sauce.

When I posted about making my version of vegetarian sausage rolls for party food last year, Cindy from Where’s the Beef kindly pointed me in the direction of the recipe she has been using for years. In her post Cindy remembers trips to the local bakery for sausage rolls. Such memories make me nostalgic for a time when I could stop at a bakery and eat any baked goods. I am of course nostalgic for the choice rather than the taste.

Many pie displays now include some sort of vegetarian pie but you still rarely find vegetarian sausage rolls when eating out. Cindy comments that this recipe should be shared with the world and, after finally making them, I can’t help but agree. It is easy and so delicious that I am sure there would be many takers if some enterprising person tried selling these. I thought the raw mixture was unbearably salty but when cooked it tasted so good. They are darker and richer than mine; closer in texture to that of their meaty cousins and packed with flavour.

The main problem is that these sausage rolls look so like the meaty ones that you could be mistaken for thinking they actually were. I mention this problem because it is easy to become paranoid about eating out when a vegetarian. Some meat eaters think it is hilarious to tell me the food they have just served up has meat in it, but it is too close to the truth to seem funny. Most vegetarians will have had the experience of being told that the stock is vegetarian, only to find bits of meat (or a ham bone) floating in the soup.

My mum has embraced the idea of choice and begun to make me some vegetarian sausage rolls when she makes meat sausage rolls but I worry she might mix them up. So I was inspired by the seeds on Cindy’s sausage rolls. I am now wondering if I should suggest my mum puts sesame seeds on my sausage rolls so it is easy to recognise the good ones! I know it seems obvious but it has just never occurred to me before.

Cindy’s sausage rolls with a mug of leftover mushroom stew were wonderful warming comfort food after a lazy Saturday. We even had a few for lunch the next day. This is an excellent version of a classic snack that I would recommend everyone try. Don't ask me who Liz O'Brien is because not even Cindy knows.

Finally, if you are looking for other ideas for filling vegetarian sausage rolls, you might like to try using the nut roast mixture from one of the recipes in the neb at nut roast round-up and baking it in pastry using the same method as in the recipe below.

Updates: I make these sausage rolls regularly so here are a few different versions:

Update Nov 2009: If you want a vegan version, see Cindy's vegan sausage rolls where she substitutes tofu for the egg and cottage cheese - I still mean to try it some time.

Update 2014 - made another GF version with gluten free pastry and used GF oats and GF breadcrumbs but needed more oats and breadcrumbs to make the mixture firm enough.

Update 2015 - made them using a mixture of walnuts and pistachio. Took some photos to update the ones I took back in 2008 but left in the old photo with the purple mug.

Update August 2015 - made great gluten free sausage rolls with quinoa flakes and gf breadcrumbs (needed more flakes and breadcrumbs to make the mixture firm enough) and used supermarket gf pastry (Genius).

To Make the Filling:
Combine all filling ingredients in a mixing bowl.

To Assemble:
Thaw 3 to 4 sheets of ready-rolled puff pastry. Place the first sheet on a flat surface and cut it in half, into two rectangles. Spoon the non-sausage mix down the centre third of each rectangle. Brush one long edge with beaten egg and fold in the long edges so the one with beaten egg overlaps the other edge.

Repeat with other pieces of puff pastry. Place sausage rolls seam down on a greased or baking-paper lined baking
tray. Brush with beaten egg (or milk) and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Make deep marks with a sharp knife marks to indicate where to cut them after cooking (halves, thirds or quarters). (You can alternatively cut into rolls and/or make decorative slashes.)

To Bake:
Bake sausage rolls at 220C for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cut into individual sausage rolls using marks you made before baking as a guide. (These marks make it easier to cut. Cutting sausage rolls partway through baking keeps the filling from drying out.)

At this point you can return sausage rolls to oven to bake another 10 minutes until golden brown and serve hot or set aside and bake for 10 to 15 minutes when you are ready to serve. Sausage rolls can be frozen and baked straight from the freezer (about 15 minutes at 220 C).

Sounds like such an interesting combination of ingredients--I love the idea of encasing it in pastry! (Such things are called "pigs in blankets" over here--can you imagine??). Funny, most of the vegetarian "sausages" I see are seitan-based; I think I'd like the nutroast-base much better.

Sausage rolls are such good comfort food! I've made a Delia Smith version which is very nice, but much unhealthier than yours - they're full of cream, cheese and all sorts of other calorie-laden things. Having said that, I made them at Christmas and they went down well with all the non veggies too! I like the idea of labelling them with the seeds!

thanks Lucy - I am sure passover will make you appreciate the pastry and all the other wheaty dishes when you have them

thanks Ricki - Pigs in blankets are a little different because they are an actual sausage in pastry, as I understand them here but very similar. I usually buy rather than make sausages but the nut roast mixture would make good sausages.

thanks Wendy - I reckon these ones would give the meat ones a run for their money

thanks Michelle - I think these are a good alternative (but honestly it is so long since I had a meat sausage roll I probably shouldn't make claims of similarity)

thanks Lysy - haven't seen the deliah smith version but would be interested to see it - am sure they would have gone down well at Christmas time

They look soooo yum! And if you want to go to a bakery and be able to gorge on anything, there's always La Panella in Preston - vegan/vegetarian bakery. Their vegan 'sausage' rolls are also super-tasty.

Johanna, I'm so pleased that you liked these as much as I did! Yes, they really do look like the meaty ones (makes me wonder what goes into those) and I've had several very positive experiences making them for non-vegos for that reason.

Hi Chiclet - I am not sure about adapting this recipe but I have often made other vegetarian sausage rolls just by mixing nuts, breadcrumbs and vegies and eggs but you could substitute tofu, ground flax seeds or soy flour for the eggs

There are also quite a few nut roasts and another vegetarian sausage roll recipe in my index (near the top of the right hand column of my blog) - any of which could be adapted to be a filling. My email is at the bottom of the index if you have more questions

Hello! I finally made these yesterday after bookmarking the recipe a year ago. I wanted to find an alternative to the nasty Quorn sausage rolls and pasties my husband takes on his hillwalking adventures. I used half pecans half cashews and added some grated carrot and fresh herbs... SO TASTY! And just as good cold for taking up a Munro. Thank you :)

Thanks for this recipe - sausage rolls are the only thing I miss since becoming vegetarian! I've made them a few times and they're fantastic, my non-veggie husband prefers them to regular sausage rolls.

These ingredients look vaguely familiar to the Cottage Rolls recipe I use from the Taste.com.au website. They are so good, you'd never know they didn't contain meat! Since sausage rolls used to be a weakness of mine, making a batch of these on a regular basis is a great way to satisfy my cravings!

I make the best snagger rolls but my vego daughter can't eat them. I use one grated spud one grated onion plus mixed herbs and salt and a kilo of best butcher sausage meat and use frozen puff pastry. For vego ones I suggestonion spud breadcrumbs, oil, egg or not, and nuts of some sort, I like pine nuts but they are so expensive. The herbs are essential.Fresh ones great, oregano parsley sage etc.

These really are the most amazing sausage rolls ever. When I ate meat I always loved sausages and sausage rolls, so nice to be able to have something just as good (well, better!). Someone gave me this recipe in Australia a few years ago at a party when meat-eaters and veggies alike were scoffing them by the plateload! When I've made them, a number of meat-eaters haven't believed me when I said they were veggie. Personally I don't think they taste like meat (I can't eat anything that does these days). But may be a good recipe to try to convert some people?? Pleased to find the recipe on the internet so more people can enjoy them - thanks! x

Thanks for dropping by. I love hearing from you. Please share your thoughts and questions. Annoyingly the spammers are bombarding me so I have turned on the pesky captcha code (refresh to find an easy one if you don't like the first one)

Search Green Gourmet Giraffe

About Me

Recipes and reflections in which our vegetarian heroine dreams of being tall and graceful as a giraffe; being a goddess in the kitchen; and being gladdened by green gadgets, green food and green politics because green is the colour of hope. See About Me for more info.